


You pull your hood up over your head

by zinjadu



Series: Skip a stich, change the story [3]
Category: The Banner Saga (Video Games)
Genre: Alette POV, Gen, POV Second Person, Wakes & Funerals, well that happened, what now?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 05:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16257425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: After Bellower is defeated, there is a funeral, and Alette is suddenly responsible for the banner.  She just wants her father back, but she knows she can't lose what her father built.





	You pull your hood up over your head

You pull your hood up over your head.  It hides most of your face, but it cannot completely cover the tears that track down your cheeks.  Iver towers over you as you stand in the river, the banner your father carried for too short a time unstirring in the still, foggy morning.  The bright red cloth floats on the surface of the water; it grew long under your father’s leadership, and you cannot help but wonder if it will be torn apart under yours.  The lost and the frightened could have turned to their prince for leadership, but their desperate eyes found you instead.

 

Men and varl alike handle the ship that bears your father's body—all ceremony and honor for the man who felled Bellower with the silver arrow.  Did he know it would come to this, you wonder as the varl set the boat on the pebbled shore. Did he try to protect you one last time? Men of the clan old and new step forward: Egil whose shoulders slump under the weight of grief, heavier than the metal shield he bears; Hogun is stoic in the face of death but Mogun’s eyes shine with ferocity, and you know he will take this as another reason to fight; lastly the prince of men steps forward, the fourth man to see the ship to the water, and you think of how some would consider it a great honor to have one so high attend to their father’s ship.

 

You just want him back.

 

But you know that cannot be.  You lost your mother, and if wishes made such things possible, she would be here as well.  You hope they are together again in the afterlife, that they found each other in death after being separated in life.  Perhaps that is the only comfort you can take in this moment.

 

The ship glides into the water with barely a sound and as it floats by your vision swims, becoming cloudy as the day itself.  Blinking quickly to clear your eyes, you gaze upon your father’s face one last time. His body was crushed by the dredge’s mighty hand, and the women of the clan did all they could to make him look the hale and hearty hunter he had been.  His hands are clasped over his axe and bow, but it his face that you try to fix in your memory. He had grown weary, but in death the cares of the last several months have fallen away from his face save a few more grey hairs in his beard and on his head.

 

You remember the first bow he made for you, how he encouraged you to learn all you could from Oddlief, how he held you after your mother died, and how how smiled when you accomplished any new task.  The smile that spoke of a quiet pride and a deep love. Your hands tighten on the banner’s standard, and you fight the shiver in your body. 

 

“Steady,” Iver says in a low rumble that just reaches your ears.  He does not put a hand on your shoulder—he would not make you look weak for anything—but his voice is enough to put strength back in your legs.

 

“Light the pyre,” you say, and Iver takes one heavy step forward through the water and touches the burning brand he holds without fear to the straw that fills the boat.  The straw catches with a whoosh and the heat buffets your face, drying your tears. You wonder if that was your father’s spirit trying to help you, telling you that you need not cry for him overlong.

 

Or perhaps it was just the random leap of the flames.

 

You stand in the water until the boat drifts out of sight, until the last light of your father is swallowed by the fog.  And you stand a moment longer, Iver beside you as he stood beside your father, and then you turn back to the shore. Your cloak and clothes are sopping wet, heavy and dragging, pulling you down as much as the leaden lump behind your breast.  At the water’s edge Egil briefly extends a hand as if to help you out of the river, but you can feel Iver’s head shake behind you and the young man ducks his head and steps back in line. 

 

All eyes are upon you now, and you once again wish your father was here with such intensity that it feels like a knife across your skin.  But you do not waver, you do not falter. Doing anything but standing strong would undo all the work your father has done, and you will not let that happen.  Men and women, the high and the low, even the varl and their new king look to you. A girl of sixteen summers in a green hunting cloak with the hood pulled up.

 

“To the ships, we leave immediately,” you say, and as everyone moves to their tasks you realize it was not something you said.  You gave an order, and they all followed. You glance up at Iver, surprise writ in your face. He regards you with a solemn expression, but the barest smile of approval stretches his mouth.  He says nothing, because there is nothing that needs saying. Not right now.

 

The ships are soon boarded, and they but wait for you.  With a confidence you do not feel, you pull yourself over the side of the lead vessel and stand at the prow as the ships leave the shore.  You think you might cry again, but no tears come. There is a lurch and the ships find the current, the sails catching the tendril of wind that sweeps down the middle of the river in spite of the fog.  The breeze tugs at your hood but does not pull it down.

 

You will lower your hood one day, you think, but for now it will stay up and you will wrap yourself in your cloak as if it were the sturdiest armor.  A part of yourself is hidden away now, as your face is hidden, and you pray to dead gods that will make the coming days easier to bear.


End file.
